The race to represent Tustin’s District 3 on the City Council is one of our easier calls this election season.
First elected four years ago, Councilman Ray Schnell has been a voice for common sense in City Hall.
A 20-year long Tustin resident, Schnell has brought to the office a wealth of business and civic engagement experience. His top priorities are what you’d hope a council member would say: public safety, economic vitality, fiscal responsibility and a commitment to transparent government.
California Policy Center’s Local Fiscal Health Dashboard has graded Tustin an “A” for its fiscal well-being, with top marks for its strong reserves, low debt burden and low pension costs.
“The city should live within its means, cut waste, keep fees and taxes low, and grow the tax base through responsible development—not new tax burdens on residents and local businesses,” he told us. “Prudent reserves and infrastructure investment (roads, parks, traffic) belong in the same package. That is how you fund police, fire, parks, schools, and other essential city services without saddling the next generation with debt.”
Indeed, he rightly points to the city’s growing revenues (up 29% since the 2021-22 fiscal year) and paydowns of the city’s pension debt as demonstrative of the city’s ability to serve the public and pay down debts.
His approach to housing policy is appropriately focused on facilitating supply. “We should look to increase attainable supply by lowering the cost of development, such as streamlined permitting, fewer unnecessary fees and regulations, in-fill, and appropriate density where it fits, and mitigation of traffic, school, and infrastructure impacts,” he told us. “I oppose additional local rent control, broad point-of-sale mandates, routine interior rental inspections, and rigid inclusionary formulas that shift costs onto market-rate buyers and suppress production.”
Those are all perfectly sensible approaches. While Schnell is also critical of state housing mandates, he argues “that the productive response is not resistance for its own sake and not blanket density everywhere. It is systematically lowering local process and fee barriers so responsible projects get built, while still requiring mitigation and resident input.” (Huntington Beach are you listening?)
On these issues and more, Schnell offers practical, reasonable ideas.
His challenger, Thomas James Reed, brings an academic pedigree. He teaches at California State University, Long Beach. He declined to answer questions from the editorial board, and both his campaign site and answers to a newsroom survey barely illuminate his grasp of municipal issues, which Hallmark card answers to questions like, “One of the greatest needs facing Tustin, and communities across our country, is ensuring people remain at the center of government.”
It’s an east call. Re-elect Ray Schnell.